Echoes in the Darkness (18 page)

"Bill Bradfield knew nothing about guns or machinery. He couldn't even drive a nail," Chris Pappas later said. "If ever I needed convincing that did it."

"Vince has gotten freaky on me," Bill Bradfield informed him. "He's taking tranquilizers to sleep. He's no help whatsoever. As far as weapons, I've told him that Doctor Smith's given me his guns and that you're subtly altering them so they won't be able to be fired. He's satisfied with that. He isn't able to cope with much more these days. He's not . . . shall I say man enough to understand that one day I may have no choice, no choice at all."

"You may have to . . ."

"That's right." Bill Bradfield nodded grimly. ' 'I may have to kill him."

Chris started throwing off high voltage over this one, and he asked, "Have you given any thought to logistics? How'll you do it? Do you have a plan?"

Asking Bill Bradfield if he had a plan was like asking Dwight Eisenhower if he'd given any thought to the June 6th channel crossing. The "plan" involved more props. There was an old car seat on the Pappas property. Bill Bradfield and Chris walked over to it and rehearsed. He told Chris to sit down on the left, as though he were Jay Smith driving.

"Pretend that I have this little silenced pistol in a plastic bag," he said, lifting Chris's .22 pistol. "Doctor Smith likes to do his talking in the car while we drive around, so that our conversations can't be monitored. Now, I'll wait until the appropriate moment, maybe when he stops at a stop sign, and then I'll pull my pistol from the plastic bag and pow!"

With that, Bill Bradfield popped a few rounds at a tree, and they were hardly audible. Chris had done a great job with the homemade silencer.

"I've just shot Doctor Smith in the head!" Bill Bradfield cried, and then became appropriately grave.

Chris became more grave with the last news of the day. "Your parents' lives may depend on our silence," Bill Bradfield said. "If he finds out how much you know, he'll kill my parents and yours."

Bill Bradfield put the gun in his pretend bag and practiced a quick draw. Then he put a target on a tree at about the height of Jay Smith's head. He drew and fired. He shot up a lot of ammo. He even tried shooting from the hip. He only stopped when he nearly blew his balls off with a superquick draw.

Chapter
11

Ambergris

It was time for a break in the action. A Bill Bradfield former student who attended St. Johns College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was about to be married there.

Chris asked Bill Bradfield if he was going to the wedding but Bill Bradfield declined, one of the reasons being his suspicion that the young chap hadn't heeded his advice to stay pure and chaste until marriage.

But in that Bill Bradfield was as predictable as a Tijuana dog race, he called Chris a few days later to say that he'd changed his mind and toas coming along so that he "could do a favor for Doctor Smith."

The wedding in Santa Fe was happy and the young couple was handsome and Chris wondered what Jay Smith could want done in New Mexico. He found out the day after the wedding when Bill Bradfield said that they were going to take a little drive from Santa Fe to Taos.

The Jay Smith "favor" had to do with the fact that cops were starting to pressure Dr. Jay about certain welfare checks that had been cashed around The Main Line, checks issued to his missing son-in-law, Eddie Hunsberger, and bearing Eddie's forged signature. Jay Smith figured he had enough to worry about with his upcoming court trials so he asked his alibi witness, Bill Bradfield, to plant a seed or two in the arid soil of New Mexico.

Jay Smith supposedly told Bill Bradfield that there was a Spanish-speaking couple in a Taos commune with whom Stephanie and Eddie had stayed for a period of time. Jay Smith wanted to establish the time-frame when Stephanie and Eddie had been with the couple, a time that hopefully would be close to the period in which the stolen Hunsberger checks were being forged and cashed by person(s) unknown. That way, Jay Smith could tell the cops to get off his back because his daughter and son-in-law were alive and well, and maybe they'd stop implying that Jay Smith was the kind of guy who would murder his own daughter

Off they drove from Santa Fe to Taos, not to visit the Spanish-speaking couple, but to phone the couple to arrange a visit. Chris Pappas didn't ask why they hadn't called the couple from Santa Fe before driving clear to Taos. He didn't have time for such things. He was too busy trying to understand why they were trying to prove that Jay Smith wasn't murderous enough to have killed his daughter when for the past several weeks they'd been glowing white-hot with the certain knowledge that Jay Smith was as deadly as plutonium in your drinking water.

After they got to Taos, Bill Bradfield made a private call from a pay phone outside a restaurant and informed Chris that the mission was accomplished. No further action was necessary. Back they drove to Santa Fe. Chris assumed by what Bill Bradfield told him that the Spanish-speaking couple had alibied Jay Smith by verifying that the Hunsbergers had been with them during the time in question. But Chris assumed incorrectly.

When they got back to Pennsylvania Chris received an urgent message from Bill Bradfield that their Taos trip had been another devious plot by Jay Smith to use and humiliate him. Jay Smith had just confessed to Bill Bradfield that he had in fact forged and cashed the Hunsberger checks. And according to Bill Bradfield, Jay Smith hinted that he had killed and disposed of Stephanie and Eddie Hunsberger.

What Bill Bradfield didn't tell Chris Pappas was that on the very day that they were in Taos, a friend from work of Jay Smith's wife had accepted an urgent collect call at the dry cleaner's on behalf of Stephanie Smith who was back in the hospital for cancer treatment.

"Hie friend talked to the Taos operator and then to the caller who said, "Hi! This is Eddie Hunsberger. Everything's okay with my wife and me. Please pass on the message to Mrs. Smith."

She had never talked to Edward Hunsberger before, but was delighted to relay the good news that he was alive and well in Taos, New Mexico.

* * *

Chris was called off his surveillance activities. Bill Bradfield decided that for now Jay Smith was probably not a great threat to Susan Reinert because he was too busy slaughtering prostitutes.

The prostitutes were also known as "remotes," because they were remotely connected with the Jay Smith investigation. Bill Bradfield claimed that the "remotes" had made the mistake of smoking dope with Jay Smith, thus spoiling his defense that the drugs found in the Smith home belonged to Eddie and Stephanie Hunsberger. Dr. Jay was determined that the remotes should never appear as character witnesses against him in his upcoming trial. They had to go.

Sure enough, the next day in the papers there was a double murder-suicide in King of Prussia (which had been announced on the radio the day before) and Bill Bradfield pointed out to Chris that Jay Smith had done in the poor remotes and made it look like a family affair.

Chris was shown a legal document by Bill Bradfield who seemed almost as distressed by it as he'd been when he got the news that Jay Smith smoked pot. Susan Reinert had listed him as a beneficiary on a will and had made him the guardian of her children in the event of her death.

So now, in addition to his moral obligation to provide an alibi for the Sears theft for a guy who'd probably "disappeared" his own daughter and son-in-law, and to protect Jay Smith's secret mistress from being disappeared, Bill Bradfield had his life complicated by this damn will!

There was only one consolation. "This will is not a final version," he said. Bill Bradfield thought he still had a chance of getting her to drop her mad scheme of "obligating him" in her affairs. He had to persuade her to change the will, so that if she met a terrible fate the police wouldn't think he was connected with her.

But Bill Bradfield had another worry: he knew of a second guy who wanted to kill Susan Reinert.

She'd been dating a black man from Carlisle named Alex, Bill Bradfield said. Alex was into kinky sex in a big way: he liked Susan Reinert to tie him up and beat him. And he wanted her to urinate on him, as did some other boyfriends she dated.

Chris was repulsed by the news of those golden showers, and while he was wondering if Susan Reinert was worth the hazardous duty on her behalf, Bill Bradfield said that the reason she'd confessed this to him was that she was making a last (utile attempt to persuade him to marry her and take her away from the degradation.

From time to time even the most ardent disciple needs an offer of proof. Chris's need came when Bill Bradfield told him about the "double-screen contact system" he and Jay Smith had devised to eliminate unwanted calls and to protect themselves from each other in the event that one of them was cooperating with authorities. It appeared that the dog distrusted the pony, and vice versa.

The double-screen phone system was designed so that if the calling party wanted to phone the other he'd let it ring three times, then hang up and call again. He'd let it ring once, then hang up and call again and let it ring three times.

If the other party was at home, he'd then take the phone off the hook so that when the caller tried to call a fourth time he'd get a busy signal and know that it was okay to put phase two into operation.

Phase two went like this: each man had a list of fifteen pay phones, with a numerical designation beside each number. The phones were all located within twenty minutes from home. They had each selected their own fifteen public phones and then exchanged lists. The caller would wait twenty minutes and start with the first phone number on his list. He'd continue calling until a phone was answered by his partner.

There was a third phase that might be used in the event of a perceived threat. It went like this: Bill Bradfield might reach Jay Smith on phone number five. But Dr. Jay might decide that he didn't like the looks of a lady in a red bandana loitering nearby, so he'd pick up phone number five and quickly say, "Go to number seven."

Then Bill Bradfield would wait ten minutes and call number seven on his list.

Bill Bradfield explained that Jay Smith admitted to having a favorite phone. It was one of the public phones in the Sheraton Hotel in King of Prussia. The phone booths were surrounded by mirrors so that Dr. Jay could sit in the booth and watch for dolls in red bandanas or guys with green carnations, or whatever.

While they were relaxing with a cold snack from the kitchen Chris made the mistake of asking if there might be a simpler way to accomplish their phone calls, because these two had done everything but square the telephone digits. Bill Bradfield looked at Chris like he'd found a strange pubic hair in his face soap.

He reluctantly decided to demonstrate to Chris how brilliantly it worked. Bill Bradfield looked as though he was doing one of his methodically devised seating charts at school, as though he enjoyed the control he was exercising over Dr. Jay by sending him scurrying around his neighborhood.

By and by, Bill Bradfield said, "Hello," and beckoned Chris to the phone.

Bill Bradfield held the phone to Chris's ear and there was no mistaking his former principal's carefully enunciated speech. But before Chris could make much sense of the conversation Bill Bradfield took the receiver and by gesture indicated that he would conduct the rest of the conversation in private.

Nevertheless, just witnessing the double-screen telephone system in action, and hearing Dr. Jay Smiths own voice after all this time, brought on a huge power surge. Chris was never more convinced. He now believed every word that Bill Bradfield had ever uttered.

One night in April, Bill Bradfield took Vince Valaitis to the movies to see The Deer Hunter. But after leaving the cinema he didn't want to talk about the movie. He wanted to talk about his troubles.

"Susan Reinert's named me in her will as executor for her children," Bill Bradfield said calmly.

"She what?"

"I know," he said. "I know. The woman'll do anything to entrap me."

"It's hard to believe."

"Now what's going to happen to me if she gets killed by Doctor Smith? Or by one of those weird guys she's dating? Do you know, Vince, I've been in her home maybe two times in my life, and one of those was to help install an air conditioner."

"The whole thing is just so bizarre!" Vince said.

"When I was installing that air conditioner 1 made the mistake of lying down on the sofa to rest a minute. Do you know what happened?"

"I can't imagine," said Vince, but he could imagine.

"She tried to make advances. The woman's sex-starved. I had to practically insult her. I've done about all I can do."

"All anyone can do," Vince agreed.

"I've even managed to get my hands on Jay Smiths guns. I'm going to make them unworkable and then give them back to him."

"Susan Reinert's volunteered to be transferred to the junior high, from what I hear," Vince said. He didn't like talking about guns.

"You have to pity her," Bill Bradfield said. "She's a rotten teacher."

"I pity her," his young pal agreed.

"By the way, you've worked so hard at the store for us, I'd like to give you five hundred dollars."